The jars I have finished have started to ping, so all is well.

After all the wonderful weather we have had it is just someone or anothers law that it should turn out to be an meteorological disaster on the day that you have guests for lunch. We had invited both Anna and William and Ann and Graham to come and see the garden and take time to get to know one another. I woke yesterday morning to pouring rain, wind and grey skies. Although we are happy and content with the situation it was a shame as we had hoped to play Boule and sit out in the garden to pims about a little. Both Anna and Ann are at launch stage with their gardens and felt it all so hopeless until we showed them what we had achieved in three years and I am please to say that we may just have given them both a ray of hope. Instead of playing and being in the garden we were in the kitchen and sat until six o'clock putting the world to rights and talking about ourselves, something Mike and I really and truly miss and didn't know it, until now.

Today the sun shone and the wind was warm and I was a little disappointed, a few days like yesterday would have gone down well. Mike got the mower going again and cut the lawns and they look fantastic and I put plastic down and planted out my brussel sprouts and cauliflowers for our winter feasts. The poly was a little dry so a good soaking and then a huge harvest got us to lunchtime so I decided to tackle the processing until tonight which is where we are now.The pressure cooker is hissing away bottling Passata and the freezer is grumbling and groaning at the addition of yet another load of courgettes.

Mike's Uncle Tom died last week and we have sent french sympathy cards to his cousins as we can't be with them next Tuesday. I was very impressed with the way these cards are presented, inside each card there are 7 sets of words to choose from and copy, I read them out to Mike but they were just too General De Gaulle for us to use, amazingly intricate French that a regular Frenchman would have trouble understanding, but nice gesture all the same. We are thinking of converting HOSS's room into a little Gym so that Mike can properly exercise his poor old knees and legs so we are walking around the place making plans for change and Mike is glued to le bon coin looking for very cheap equipment.

signing off now the pressure cooker is on the last batch and the jars I have finished have started to ping, so all is well.